Ireland’s Languages of Landscape

Ireland has a culture of dindsenchas, or place-lore, dating from ancient courts of High Kings. Mythical cycles feature superhumans and rove the landscape, giving names to rivers, lakes, and mountains. Mapping of place persists with James Joyce, Seamus Heaney, and Eavan Boland, lending focus to the chapter. Ireland has been repeatedly invaded, both in myth and the succession of Vikings, Normans, and British, each with different priorities for the land. Brian Friel’s play, Translations, depicts the British mapping Ireland, with the substitution of English place names. Vast tracts of land were assigned to the Protestant Ascendancy Class, displacing Celtic Catholics to small rented plots. Poems depict famine conditions and emigration following the potato blight. George Moore’s A Drama in Muslin represents the resulting land wars and the decline of the Ascendancy. The Irish Literary Revival, dominated by the Anglo-Irish including Lady Augusta Gregory, William Butler Yeats, and John Millington Synge, re-versioned Celtic Ireland, favoring the west. James Joyce represents the urban underclass of Dublin. Ireland depicted as a female figure—either exerting power or requiring rescue—exists from the myths to the twentieth century. Boland’s response to Yeats and Joyce revises this, representing actual, suburban women’s.